Los Angeles: the Zen of travelling

Travelling
When my family used to travel, they did it very differently than I do
now. They’d be working hard all year, saving up vacation days and money,
and then we’d often go off on a two week jaunt to for example a Spanish
island, spend lot’s of money on hotels, food and airfare, and hope to
have “intensive fun” to make up for a long year of drudgery. To be fair,
it’s not easy to travel with three kids, and we did go camping a lot in
Norway as well.

Travelling as I do, and have mostly done in my life, with very little
money and a lot of time is a very different thing, with its own
challenges and rewards. You are forced to rely heavily on other people
(because I cannot usually afford hotels, at least not in the first
world), you often travel on buses, trains, walk around in strange cities
with a big backpack not knowing where you are going to go next. There is
no chartered plane that is met by hotel busses whisking you straight to
the pool, and the breakfast buffet. The upside is that you see a lot
more of the real society, you meet a lot of wonderful people, and you
often find yourself in interesting and funny situations. The downside is
that it can be very tiring.

Los Angeles
I walked around San Francisco a whole day; met a friend from the
project in Mexico for lunch, and finally got on the night-bus to Los
Angeles at around 11PM. The trip was uneventful, and we arrived in Los
Angeles at 7:25 in the morning. I already knew from a previous visit
that the Los Angeles Greyhound station is kind of scary (especially at
3AM, which is when I was there last time), and that it was in a
rundown-part of town, but my host had promised to meet me. I was waiting
outside for about an hour, until I gave up. I tried calling her from a
payphone, but could not get through. The nice Chinese lady that I helped
interpret for in San Francisco (she didn’t speak a word of English) lent
me her cellphone, but nobody picked up on the other end. OK, I just
dropped my luggage there, and walked in to town.

Los Angeles is certainly not the best city to walk around in, but I was
lucky enough to stumble upon a tourist bureau that provided me with free
maps (these should be available at all Greyhound stations!) and some
information about different walks that I could take. They told me that I
could use the public library for free internet, so I went there to see
if my friend had written anything. She told me that I could contact her
later, and that she was quite busy that day. I was kind of tired, so I
chose a book and sat down in a nice chair.

A while later, I wake up, in a nice chair, with a book about the Ruby
programming language open on my lap. It took me a while to figure out
where I was. I left, got something to eat, and headed for Hollywood. The
street called Hollywood boulevard is where a lot of Hollywood movie
history was made, but right now it’s not very glamorous. At least I got
to see the star’s footprints in the concrete, and where the Oscar’s are
handed out. A tout convinced me to do a “tour of the star’s homes” (I
figured I’m not in Hollywood that often, might as well).

I finally got in touch with my friend, and she told me she’d be helping
her uncle photograph his scooters at a warehouse downtown, at 10PM. I
made my way there, and was standing outside the gate waiting for her
uncle to open up. The warehouse was in a sketchy part of town, and
several “interesting” individuals came up to me to “chat”. I was happy
when he let me in.

The shoot turned out to take a lot of time… a lot of time, in fact
they didn’t finish until 8 in the morning. (She always thougth they’d
finish really soon, so she didn’t take me home in the meantime). We all
arrived at her parents’ house completely devastated, and fell into bed.
When I woke up, around 2:30, she was gone. Her mother gave me a glass of
Apple juice before she left, and there was only her little sister back.
I didn’t know what was going on, tried to call her but her cellphone was
at home. I just sat there, watching Chinese TV on a bigscreen, waiting
for the world to make sense again.

Profound conclusion
Sometimes you need to step back and think, wow: I am in a big warehouse
in downtown Los Angeles, with Chinese workes taking catalogue pictures
of imported scooters! Or, wow: I am in a nice suburban Los Angeles
house, drinking apple juice, and watching a Chinese drama, or wow: I am
in the multimedia lab at University of Arizona, soaking wet because of
the crazy rain, helping my friend digitize cassettes of tradition
Chinese ethnic music… The last one is right now, while I am writing
this.

So yes, travelling like this can be tiresome. Walking around all day,
carrying bags, waiting for buses, for people… not knowing what’s going
on, wondering what’s the polite thing to do, what’s going to happen
next? Things might not work out as you thought, but in exchange you get
to meet some amazing people, experience some great situations,
accumulate some great stories to tell!